Thread: Dell PERC H700/H800
Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any more. Matthew -- An optimist sees the glass as half full, a pessimist as half empty, and an engineer as having redundant storage capacity.
On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 12:39 +0000, Matthew Wakeling wrote: > Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no > longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. > > http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ > > As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA > or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any > more. That's interesting. I know that IBM at least on some of their models have done the same. Glad I use HP :) Joshua D. Drake > > Matthew > > -- > An optimist sees the glass as half full, a pessimist as half empty, > and an engineer as having redundant storage capacity. > -- PostgreSQL.org Major Contributor Command Prompt, Inc: http://www.commandprompt.com/ - 503.667.4564 Consulting, Training, Support, Custom Development, Engineering Respect is earned, not gained through arbitrary and repetitive use or Mr. or Sir.
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Matthew Wakeling <matthew@flymine.org> wrote: > > Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no > longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. > > http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ > > As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA or > SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any > more. Yet one more reason I'm glad I no longer source servers from Dell. I just ask my guy at Aberdeen if he thinks drive X is a good choice, we discuss it like adults and I make my decision. And I generally listen to him because he's usually right. But I'd spit nails if my my RAID controller refused to work with whatever drives I decided to plug into it.
Matthew Wakeling wrote: > > Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers > will no longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. > > http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ > > > As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer > SATA or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those > acronyms any more. > > Matthew > I think that's potentially FUD. Its all about 'Dell qualified drives'. I can't see anything that suggests that Dell will OEM drives and somehow tag them so that the drive must have come from them. Of course they are big enough that they could have special BIOS I guess, but I read it that the drive types (and presumably revisions thereof) had to be recognised by the controller from a list, which presumably can be reflashed, which is not quite saying that if some WD enterprise drive model is 'qualified' then you have to buy it from Dell.. Do you have any further detail?
2010/2/11 James Mansion <james@mansionfamily.plus.com>: > Matthew Wakeling wrote: >> >> Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no >> longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. >> >> >> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ >> >> As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA >> or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any >> more. >> > I think that's potentially FUD. Its all about 'Dell qualified drives'. I > can't see anything that suggests that Dell will OEM drives and somehow tag > them so that the drive must have come from them. Of course they are big > enough that they could have special BIOS I guess, but I read it that the > drive types (and presumably revisions thereof) had to be recognised by the > controller from a list, which presumably can be reflashed, which is not > quite saying that if some WD enterprise drive model is 'qualified' then you > have to buy it from Dell.. > > Do you have any further detail? For example: SAMSUNG MCCOE50G, 50GB SSD which you can buy only from Dell. It's unknown at Samsung page. I think they can easy order own model. -- Łukasz Jagiełło System Administrator G-Forces Web Management Polska sp. z o.o. (www.gforces.pl) Ul. Kruczkowskiego 12, 80-288 Gdańsk Spółka wpisana do KRS pod nr 246596 decyzją Sądu Rejonowego Gdańsk-Północ
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, James Mansion <james@mansionfamily.plus.com> wrote: > Matthew Wakeling wrote: >> >> Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no >> longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. >> >> >> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ >> >> As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA >> or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any >> more. >> >> Matthew >> > I think that's potentially FUD. Its all about 'Dell qualified drives'. I > can't see anything that suggests that Dell will OEM drives and somehow tag > them so that the drive must have come from them. Of course they are big > enough that they could have special BIOS I guess, but I read it that the > drive types (and presumably revisions thereof) had to be recognised by the > controller from a list, which presumably can be reflashed, which is not > quite saying that if some WD enterprise drive model is 'qualified' then you > have to buy it from Dell.. > > Do you have any further detail? In the post to the dell mailing list ( http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-February/041335.html ) It was pointed out that the user had installed Seagate ES.2 drives, which are enterprise class drives that have been around a while and are kind of the standard SATA enterprise clas drives and are listed so by Seagate: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/servers/barracuda_es/barracuda_es.2 These drives were marked as BLOCKED and unusable by the system. The pdf linked to in the dell forum specifically states that the hard drives are loaded with a dell specific firmware. The PDF seems otherwise free of useful information, and is mostly a marketing tool as near as I can tell.
On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 12:39 +0000, Matthew Wakeling wrote: > Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no > longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. > > http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ > > As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA > or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any > more. That's interesting. I know that IBM at least on some of their models have done the same. Glad I use HP :) Joshua D. Drake > > Matthew > > -- > An optimist sees the glass as half full, a pessimist as half empty, > and an engineer as having redundant storage capacity. > -- PostgreSQL.org Major Contributor Command Prompt, Inc: http://www.commandprompt.com/ - 503.667.4564 Consulting, Training, Support, Custom Development, Engineering Respect is earned, not gained through arbitrary and repetitive use or Mr. or Sir.
I do think it's valid to prevent idiot customers from installing drives that use too much power or run too hot, or desktop drives that don't support fast-fail reads, thus driving up Dell's support load, but it sounds like this is more of a lock-in attempt.
This is kind of a dumb move on their part .... most enterprise buyers will buy drives through them anyway for support reasons, and the low end guys who are price sensitive will just take their business elsewhere. I'm not sure who thought this would increase revenue materially.
Cheers
Dave
This is kind of a dumb move on their part .... most enterprise buyers will buy drives through them anyway for support reasons, and the low end guys who are price sensitive will just take their business elsewhere. I'm not sure who thought this would increase revenue materially.
Cheers
Dave
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, James MansionIn the post to the dell mailing list (
<james@mansionfamily.plus.com> wrote:
> Matthew Wakeling wrote:
>>
>> Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no
>> longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell.
>>
>>
>> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/
>>
>> As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA
>> or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any
>> more.
>>
>> Matthew
>>
> I think that's potentially FUD. Its all about 'Dell qualified drives'. I
> can't see anything that suggests that Dell will OEM drives and somehow tag
> them so that the drive must have come from them. Of course they are big
> enough that they could have special BIOS I guess, but I read it that the
> drive types (and presumably revisions thereof) had to be recognised by the
> controller from a list, which presumably can be reflashed, which is not
> quite saying that if some WD enterprise drive model is 'qualified' then you
> have to buy it from Dell..
>
> Do you have any further detail?
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-February/041335.html
) It was pointed out that the user had installed Seagate ES.2 drives,
which are enterprise class drives that have been around a while and
are kind of the standard SATA enterprise clas drives and are listed so
by Seagate:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/servers/barracuda_es/barracuda_es.2
These drives were marked as BLOCKED and unusable by the system.
The pdf linked to in the dell forum specifically states that the hard
drives are loaded with a dell specific firmware. The PDF seems
otherwise free of useful information, and is mostly a marketing tool
as near as I can tell.
--
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I've been full-on vocally anti-Dell ever since they started releasing PCs with the non-standard ATX power supply pinout; that was my final straw with their terrible quality decisions. But after doing two tuning exercises with PERC6 controllers and getting quite good results this year, just a few weeks ago I begrudgingly added them to my "known good hardware" list as a viable candidate to suggest to people. They finally took a good LSI card and didn't screw anything up in their version. I am somehow relieved that sanity has returned to my view of the world now, with Dell right back onto the shit list again. If they want a HCL and to warn people they're in an unsupported configuration when they violate it, which happens on some of their equipment, fine. This move is just going to kill sales of their servers into the low-end of the market, which relied heavily on buying the base system from them and then dropping their own drives in rather than pay the full "enterprise drive" markup for non-critical systems. I do not as a rule ever do business with a vendor who tries to lock me into being their sole supplier, particularly for consumable replacement parts--certainly a category hard drives fall into. Probably the best place to complain and suggest others do the same at is http://www.ideastorm.com/ideaView?id=087700000000dwTAAQ -- Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant Baltimore, MD PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support greg@2ndQuadrant.com www.2ndQuadrant.com
Recently most of our Dell servers came up for warranty extensions and we decided against it. They're all 3+ years old now and replacement parts are cheaper than the Dell warranty extension. In fact the price Dell quoted us on warranty extension was about twice what these machines are going for on Ebay used right now (i.e. about $800 or for each server). I can't imagine that warranty becoming a better value over time. Recently, a 73GB 2.5" drive in one of our 1950s died. The Dell price was something insane like $350 or something, and they were just out of warranty. Put the part number into Ebay and found two guaranteed pulls for about $70 each. Ordered both and with shipping it was right at $150. So now I've got a replacement and a spare for about half the cost of the single replacement drive from Dell. And they both work just fine. I now buy hardware from a whitebox vendor who covers my whole system for 5 years. In the two years I've used them I've had four drive failures and they either let me ship it back and then get the replacement for non-urgent parts, or cross-ship with a CC charge / refund on priority drives, like for a db server. Note that we run a lot of drives and we run them ragged. This many failures is not uncommon. These machines are burnt in, and if something critical fails they just ship it out and I have the replacement the next day. And there's no bumbling idiot (other than myself) turning a screwdriver in my server without a wrist strap or a clue.
Greg Smith wrote: > I've been full-on vocally anti-Dell ever since they started releasing > PCs with the non-standard ATX power supply pinout; that was my final > straw with their terrible quality decisions. Yep, makes me feel validated for all of the anti-Dell advice I have given over the years at conference and training classes. -- Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 12:39 +0000, Matthew Wakeling wrote: >> Just a heads up - apparently the more recent Dell RAID controllers will no >> longer recognise hard discs that weren't sold through Dell. >> >> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/ >> >> As one of the comments points out, that kind of makes them no longer SATA >> or SAS compatible, and they shouldn't be allowed to use those acronyms any >> more. > > That's interesting. I know that IBM at least on some of their models > have done the same. Glad I use HP :) all of the main vendors do that - IBM does and so does HP (unless you count the toy boxes without a real raid controller). The later actually goes so far and blacklists some of their own hdd firmware levels in more recent controller versions which can cause quite some "surprising" results during maintenance operations. I find it quite strange that people seem to be surprised by Dell now starting with that as well (I atually find it really surprising they have not done that before). Stefan